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Cicer arietinum

There are three main kinds of chickpeas: Desi, which has small, darker seeds and a rough coat; Bombay, which has slightly larger dark seeds; and Kabuli, which has lighter coloured seeds with a smooth coat. Chickpeas are an excellent source of the essential nutrients, iron, folate, phosphorus, protein and dietary fiber. Chickpeas are low in fat and most of this is polyunsaturated. Desi chickpeas have a markedly higher fiber content than Kabulis and hence a very low glycemic index which may make them suitable for people with blood sugar problems. The plant grows to between 20–50 cm high and has small feathery leaves on either side of the stem. Chickpea pods are short in length containing 2-3 seeds.

This group is involved in a wide range of biotechnology projects that accelerate the legume breeding process. Double-haploid technology has been achieved in both chickpea and field pea by the CDC group in collaboration with colleagues in France and Australia. Efforts are underway to adapt this technology to lentil. Improving efficiency and integrating these techniques into routine breeding programs to enhance genetic gain are important long-term goals.

The nutritional value of pea, lentil, chickpea and dry bean grains are highly important for human health. Biofortification, enriching the nutritional contribution of staple crops through plant breeding, is one option that is now widely discussed in the fields of nutrition and public health at the national and international levels.

Sequencing reads were assembled into contigs using the NGen assembler resulting in 22,927 CDC Frontier contigs. Contigs from the other 10 lines were compared to CDC Frontier and loci which were polymorphic between CDC Frontier and at least one other line were identified resulting in 55,206 SNPs. However, it was later found that aligning the sequencing reads directly to the current genome build produced a much more reliable set of SNPs. As such, THESE SNPS SHOULD NOT BE USED; they are simply here for archival purposes.

The project has three phases: In the first phase, chickpea genotypes were evaluated in the growth chambers for their flowering response under both long (16 h) and short days (10 h) and 22 0C and 16 0C day and night temperatures. Variability among the genotypes in their flowering response under either long or short days was identified. In the second phase of the study eight selected chickpea genotypes with extreme responses to photoperiod will be evaluated to determine the timing and duration of the photoperiod sensitive phase and the time of floral initiation and to establish whether photoperiod sensitivity ends at floral initiation or if it extends further into the phases of flower development. These same eight genotypes will be further characterized in a factorial combination of two photoperiods: 10 h and 16 h and three temperatures regimes: 16/8 0C, 20/12 0C and 24/16 0C (day/night). This study allows us to determine flowering response of chickpea genotypes grown in a range of thermal regimes combined with either long or short days. In the third phase of the study, chickpea RILs derived from a cross between ICCV 96029 and CDC Frontier and their parents will be used for mapping genes for early flowering, photoperiod insensitivity and reaction to ascochyta blight.

In many important crop species, the strategy of single seed descent (SSD) enables only 2 - 3 generations per year. Approximately eight generations of inbreeding are required before plants are mostly homozygous (‘true breeding’). This creates a ‘bottleneck’ in cultivar development. Hence, the purpose of this project is to develop a rapid generation cycling technique for CDC pulse crops in order to speed up the breeding process by using in vitro flowering technique.